


Makyo

by White Aster (white_aster)



Category: Ginyuu Mokushiroku Meine Liebe | Meine Liebe
Genre: Community: yaoi_challenge, Loyalty, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-19
Updated: 2006-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-12 19:19:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/128199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/white_aster/pseuds/White%20Aster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ludwig, Naoji, and judging one's value in the mirror of another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Makyo

\- Title: Makyo  
\- Fandom: Meine Liebe  
\- Pairing/Character: Naoji/Ludwig  
\- Author: BunnyWhipped  
\- Recipient: Wilhelm Graf von Trokenbeerenauslese  
\- Rating: G  
\- Warnings: ...lots of talking. Lots of things unsaid. Lots of Talking and Not Talking About What Our Relationship Means (In A Manly, Round-about Way).  
\- Summary: How does one judge one's value in another's eyes?

 

Ludwig's cool, regimented exterior was an armor of habit. It kept his thoughts and feelings hidden. He had many enemies, some traditional and some personal, and he learned at an early age that hiding one's thoughts and as much as possible of one's desires gave one's enemies less to work with. The soft voice, the cool stare, the expressionless mask were all born out of distrust of the world around him and had become second nature before Naoji even met him.

That Ludwig has, over the years, trusted him enough to consider him not just ally but friend, and not just friend but confidante and occasional lover, was one of the greatest honors Naoji had ever earned. That a man with so little faith in others would trust him so implicitly, with his political plans, with his reputation, with his body if not his heart, was something Naoji would cherish to his grave.

Of course, there was a small voice in the back of his mind that noticed that granting a careful measure of trust in order to bring another closer to him was a trick that Ludwig often used. When he was young, Naoji worried overmuch over that, trying to divine whether he was merely another pawn in Ludwig's eyes. As he grew older, he realized that he was, that everyone was, that that calculation was as much a part of Ludwig as his cunning and his deft swordplay. That Ludwig was, on some fundamental level, incapable of looking at someone without noting their worth to himself and filing away the information for use later.

That realization might have been enough to chase others away. The realization that one was weighed and measured like wheat in the market and deemed worthy or not. Being valued in such a way made one wonder exactly how much one was worth, and whether one might be sold, sacrificed, or traded for the right price. It was a cold, comfortless way of looking at others, and Naoji found himself considering broaching the subject to Ludwig, of how he could think in such terms. He found his question answered, one day, before it could be asked, which was probably for the better.

They were finishing the last of the day's work, and it was well past suppertime.

"--to get things moving swiftly. If Orpherus would only so kindly stop leading my opposition."

Naoji smiled slightly into his teacup. "I don't believe that he called you a cold-hearted bastard in Assembly today. You should have seen the faces of the new pages. They were shocked speechless."

Ludwig took off his reading glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose with two fingers. "Honestly, to listen to the man I push down old women in the streets and eat puppies for breakfast. Don't think that I didn't hear him asking you the other day how you could stand to work beneath me."

Naoji's heart skipped a beat, though he tried not to show it. He hadn't realized that Ludwig had been close enough to hear that exchange. "Did you hear my answer?" Naoji moved to set his teacup down on a pile of books, then eyed the tottering stack and thought better of it.

"I did. Though I must admit, you did not sound completely convinced, yourself." Ludwig was watching him now, carefully, with a look that Naoji recognized, though usually its keen perception was turned elsewhere.

Naoji could not remember exactly what he had said. Something trite about Ludwig being a good man who had earned his loyalty. "Really? I think that I was a bit tired at the time."

Ludwig just watched him, and for the first time in a long time, the silence between them held a tension that Naoji did not know how to break. He had no illusions that Ludwig didn't know that he was being purposely evasive. Yet he wasn't certain that Ludwig knew why. Naoji himself had no words for the cold, uncertain feeling he'd been carrying about in his chest. He suspected that the only words that would come close would leave him sounding like a spurned woman demanding a sign of her beau's affection, and they both deserved better than that.

Ludwig stood and paced to the sideboard, where the coffee sat, by now long cold. He poured himself a cup, speaking without turning. "My father once told me that there was nothing more valuable than single-minded loyalty. To know that your followers will carry out your will unquestioningly." His head tilted back, drinking the cold brew like liquor best downed quickly.

The chink of cup returning to the saucer was loud in the room.

"He is wrong." Ludwig turned, meeting Naoji's eyes. "His assumption is that his decisions are infallible. That he has no need for anyone to question him because he is always correct. It is an arrogance that will be his undoing someday."

The weight of things unsaid was too heavy for both of them, and for once Ludwig looked away first, out the dark window. "The most valuable thing is loyalty that does not merely follow, but supports. Loyalty that is no dumb puppet, but fully aware and intelligent, able to think and reason and argue if need be, to ensure that no mistakes are made. Loyalty that is unwavering but not unquestioning and that is able to tell its liege when he is being an ass needlessly."

Naoji couldn't help but smile at the joke between them, born out of an exasperated comment he'd made years ago that Ludwig had never let him forget.

Ludwig came back to stand by him, looking down at where Naoji sat. The careful mask had slipped, just a hair, an almost pained line appearing between his eyes, as if he was puzzling through what to say and uncertain as to whether he was saying it correctly. "Loyalty that keeps my secrets and..." He reached out, his fingers brushing Naoji's cheek in a featherlight caress, there and gone as if it had never been. "...every now and then lets me remember what it's like not to have them. That loyalty is...beyond price to me."

Words burned in Naoji's throat, at once joyful but also piqued to hear himself boiled down to one word so. He couldn't stop them from escaping. "And without that loyalty? Would that man still be of worth to you?"

Another man might have been pained at the implication, but Ludwig did not flinch. "Without loyalty, would either of us be worthy of the other? If I were the unfeeling monster that some think me, you would see it before any other. The day that I can no longer stand to see myself through your eyes is the day I have truly lost my way."

It was an indirect, selfish answer, but then Ludwig was often incapable of seeing anything outside of his own terms, and Naoji did not hold it against him. It was, after all, answering his question, unspoken as it'd been. "Do you fear that day so?" Naoji murmured distractedly.

"Every day of my life. For that day would be the day that you would leave."

It was an answer more raw than, perhaps, either of them was expecting. Ludwig looked away first, and Naoji's eyes dropped to his cup again, wrapping the words up in his heart, for he knew that he would never hear them again. Part of him wished that he'd never heard them at all. They hurt in ways that he wouldn't give up for the world.

~End


End file.
